He watched
her down-drooped face and said:
"Then I could go in peace. Am I asking too much?"
She made a negative movement with her head and turned her face away
from him.
"You'll do this for my happiness now?"
"Anything," she murmured.
"It will be also for your own."
He moved his free hand and clasped it on the mound made by their locked
fingers. Through the stillness a man's voice singing Zavier's Canadian
song came to them. It stopped at the girl's outer ear, but, like a
hail from a fading land, penetrated to the man's brain and he stirred.
"Hist!" he said raising his brows, "there's that French song your
mother used to sing."
The distant voice rose to the plaintive burden and he lay motionless,
his eyes filmed with memories. As the present dimmed the past grew
clearer. His hold on the moment relaxed and he slipped away from it on
a tide of recollection, muttering the words.
The girl sat mute, her hand cold under his, her being passing in an
agonized birth throe from unconsciousness to self-recognition. Her
will--its strength till now unguessed--rose resistant, a thing of iron.
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